Sunday, March 29, 2015

How many conspiracies
has the Venezuelan government claimed to have revealed in the past 15 years? If
every single claim made by each public official and public media outlet is
counted, then dozens of conspiracies have been discovered every year.

However, one
legitimate move in the language game of the conspiracy rhetoric played by the
government is to claim that all conspiracies are part of a single Grand Imperial
Conspiracy plot, which reveals itself in successive and often overlapping sub-plots.

Coup d’état attempts,
magnicidios (attempts to kill the
president or other government officials), economic, psychological, media, and cultural
wars, are all part of a gigantic international plot with extended connections
over long distances, and control over vast resources.

This unified
conspiracy can be summarized as a grand plot by “The Empire”, usually meaning
the United States government, controlled by the “industrial-military complex”. The
rules of the language game allow for a wide variety of sub-conspiracies and
conspirators to be moved and linked in complex plots, which may represent successive
phases of the development of the main plot.

Local opposition
leaders and critical persons and groups lose their independence and are turned
into mere lackeys of foreigner and powerful puppet masters. In this language
game only two legitimate moves are allowed for persons: either they unconditionally
and loyally support the Leader in his struggle against the all-powerful
imperial conspirator, or they become traitors in cahoots with a foreign power. No
middle ground remains for a possible move and politics ceases to be the field
of negotiation and agreement to become the polarized stage of a constant conflict
for survival.

Far from an
emancipatory language game, anti-imperialism becomes the tool for de-politicization
and repression. Persons no longer have control over the discussion of their
day-to-day problems and their possible solutions, and instead are asked to “temporarily”
suspend their criticism of the authorities and the Revolution. The people or
the government is not responsible for those problems and solutions; the Empire
is the real and external source of all evils.

In the conflict played
out by this rhetoric, extreme internal measures become necessary to protect the
people from the external threat. Fifth columns have to be neutralized, internal
discussion silenced, and politics suspended. All is to be left in the hands of
the protecting Leader.

The language game of
anti-imperialist hysteria is not played with the grammar of politics: it’s
played under the rules of war. This is not the time for the squeamish, says the
rule stablished by the Revolution, but the time for
definitions.

Friday, March 27, 2015

During the Summit of
the Americas to be held next month in Panama, Venezuelan
president Nicolás Maduro will ask U.S. president Barack Obama to hand over
to Venezuela’s justice the members of what he called a “conspiracy center” in
Miami which is “conspiring against the Venezuelan economy.”

“I am going to tell
president Obama in Panamá that he is keeping a center which is conspiring
against the economy and attacking the [Venezuelan] currency and commerce. It is
directed by people who are fugitives of Venezuelan justice and who [act] from
Miami,” said Maduro.

According to the
president, the web page dolartoday, which
has become the benchmark for the black market Dollar, is part of a conspiracy
lead by Venezuelan banker Eligio Cedeño. Maduro argued that dolartoday represents
a perverse “virtual economy” which does not correspond to the “real” Venezuelan
economy.

Wednesday, March 25, 2015

The ex-president of
Spain Felipe
González will participate as international consultant in the defense team
of jailed opposition leaders Antonio Ledezma and Leopoldo López.

President
Maduro yesterday accused González of being part of “Bogotá-Madrid axis (…) for
intervening Venezuela.” He also accused him of “coordinating the coupist lobby
in Venezuela.”

Maduro
claimed that Felipe González is “receiving a good salary, in Euros, for
getting involved in the campaign in favor of the coupists.” As evidence of this
involvement Maduro argued that the Spanish ex-president had received Colombian
citizenship in 2014.

Coordinating the “Bogotá-Caracas
axis” is, according to Maduro, the political consultant J.J. Rondón. Recent
rumors in Venezuela that children are being abducted and murdered for
organs trafficking were attributed by Maduro to a “psychological campaign”
designed by Rondón with the aim of destabilizing the country.The source for this
claim seems
to be a comment also made yesterday by National Assembly president Diosdado
Cabello: “there is a rumor around about children being abducted and their organ
stolen, it is a campaign [matriz]
that is out on the streets and has been created by perverse minds, and I am
sure that J.J. Rondón is behind this, and his local lackeys who are being paid
to do this job.”

Tuesday, March 24, 2015

According to chavista TV presenter Miguel angel Pérez Pirela, experts he has had
access to claim that the group known ISIS, now controlling parts of Syria and
Iraq, is a creation of U.S. president Barack Obama.

In this video produced by TELESUR, Pérez
Pirela provides no evidence for the claim, which he repeats three times, nor
does he reveal who the experts quoted are. But he affirms that the U.S. “needs constant
wars,” the war against ISIS is the latest expression of this need.

“Who can believe that Obama is really going
to fight a group he created himself?” asks Pérez Pirela in his final comment.

President Maduro in
person started the gathering of signatures in a street “hotspot” (esquina caliente) set up by the government.
Maduro said that he hopes to collect 10 million signatures.

The signature collection
campaign has
four levels: the first level includes the parties of the pro-government umbrella
organization “Gran Polo Patriótico” which will collect signatures among their
militants; the second is the work place “so that in an organized way the
working class, the professionals and workers, sign in their own working
centers,” explained Maduro; third is the network of pro-government street
hotspots (Red de Esquinas Calientes),
which would also serve, according
to Maduro, “to educate the population;” and a fourth level will cover telephone
services and social networks.

“Each person who
signs should know that he is signing for peace and sovereignty. I am asking for
a signature for Venezuela. I am asking for a vote of confidence and conscience on
the country,” declared Maduro.

Minister of communications
and information Jacqueline Faria also called on the people to sign: “We will
continue our struggle, working in order to keep on living, because the empire
will continue to attack us through its puppets and lackeys. But because they
[puppets and lackeys] have failed this time, they [the empire] has decided to
attack us directly,” said
the minister.

President
Maduro stressed that the campaign should have a strong educational
component in order to “explain to the people the truth about the conspiracy by
the government of the United States and the right against Venezuela.” According
to the president this will not be campaign only to gather signatures, but also
to organize “forums and debates to inform of the constant attacks of the U.S.
government, and the Venezuelan right, against the Bolivarian people and government.”

The president seems
aware that, despite the attention given to the sanctions announced by Obama against
Venezuelan officials, the deteriorating economy could still pose a problem for his
support levels. However Maduro has also adjusted for this in his conspiracy
narrative: during a rally this Wednesday he
told supporters that “the government of the U.S., allied with the national
[Venezuelan] bourgeoisie has given the order to a group of bourgeois that they
should do everything in their hands to sabotage the Venezuelan economy and to deviate
attention from the huge problem [problemón]
the U.S. has provoked with the international indignation aroused by the
infamous Obama decree against Venezuela.”

Maduro revealed that
according to the latest information he has received form “U.S. allies”, “they
[the U.S.] have ordered from their embassy that bourgeois, form CAVIDEA,
FEDEAGRO, and CONINDUSTRIA [business unions], always the same people that spend
their time at the gringa [U.S.] embassy,
should take to street to create problems [bochinche],
they should do something scandalous, so that the people forget that people has
been slandered by Obama.”

He
also said that he is not really facing the local opposition because there
is no opposition in Venezuela: “we don’t have an opposition, what we have is a
right wing kneeling in front the embassy of the United States.”

Venezuela, a peace-loving nation, calls on the U.S. government to fulfill
its international obligations regarding the respect for a country’s
self-determination and the right of its people to freely choose their own path.

On March 9, we were surprised by the Executive Order issued by President
Obama in which he declares "a national emergency with respect to the
unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of
the United States represented by the situation in Venezuela."

Even more surprising is the fact that this statement was made two days
after a delegation from the Union of South American Nations (UNASUR), a
regional integration body, visited Venezuela and met with the Venezuelan
authorities as well as several representatives from the various parties that
comprise the Venezuelan opposition. UNASUR showed great support for democracy
in Venezuela and for the parliamentary elections scheduled for later this year.

It is important to highlight that the visit of the Secretary General of
UNASUR and the Foreign Ministers of Ecuador, Colombia, Brazil and Uruguay, took
place at the invitation of the President of the Bolivarian Republic of
Venezuela, who earlier this year requested the participation of this body to
facilitate a dialogue with the US government.

Sanctions, blockades and armed aggressions are no substitute for genuine
dialogue. History has shown, as the Obama administration admitted last December
17 with regard to Cuba, that these are ineffective measures that succeed only
in causing harm to innocent people.

Venezuela, a peace-loving and anti-war nation, rejects
these actions and calls on President Barack Obama to repeal the Executive Order
against Venezuela and normalize diplomatic relations with the legitimately
elected government of President Nicolás Maduro and reaffirm the principles of
mutual respect and non-interference in the internal affairs of countries.

Monday, March 16, 2015

The National Assembly approved
yesterday the “Anti-imperialist Enabling Law for Peace” which grants
president Maduro extensive especial powers to rule by decree in matters related
to national security and sovereignty.

As part the preparations for the imperial
invasion the government has started 10 days of “civic-military
exercises” called Bolivarian Shield. According to defense minister Vladimir
Padrino López these exercises aim at reinforcing the “civic-military union in
defense of the Fatherland in the face of any imperial aggression.”

However the civil and military readiness is necessary,
not only against the external imperial aggression, but also against internal apátridas saboteurs.

Here is a video
shown by the public television channel Venezolana
de Televisión explaining how to deal with this internal threat. In the
closing minute of the video vice-president Jorge Arreaza explains that it “is a
clear demonstration of how to protect” the Venezuelan oil industry.

In the first part an actor representing a saboteur
gains access to the operation center Paraguaná oil refinery. Fortunately, the
operator at the control board “is a patriot,” says the narrator, and quickly
calls his superior. The superior confirms there is a sabotage attempt -the
suspect seems nervous alterado, says the
narrator- and calls security.

Enter the Cuerpo
Combatiente de PDVSA, including a rifle armed soldier, two corporate
security officers, and a militia member. They “proceeded to take the apátrida, saboteur, into custody.”

The video then turns to “situation number 2.”
The narrator tells us that thanks to “social intelligence” the Combat Units (Cuerpos Combatientes) of PDVSA, have received
information that a group of people have gathered with “the intention of creating
a manifestation.”

A small group of protesters wielding sticks
and rocks approach the gate of a PDVSA facility. Members of the National Guard
and Militias (not allowed by the Constitution to deal with public order
situations) arrive at the scene on motorbikes. However, the situation is
fortunately diffused by members of the Cuerpo
Combatiente who, according to the narrator, “use dialogue and the debate of
ideas” to calm down the protesters “as it is usually done in our Fatherland.”

But the danger is far from over. A tank truck
driver “intentionally” provokes an accident with an incoming car with the aim,
says the narrator, of “blocking the entrance of the refinery and paralyzing its
operation.”

Medical personal arrives at the scene to take
the injured car driver. The narrator insists for a second time that the
situation is “intentional” and not an accident. Nothing is said in the video of
what happens to the saboteur truck driver who is not seen again.

“Situation number 3” is similar to the
previous one. A second saboteur truck driver parks his tank truck in front to
the entrance and refuses to move. This second driver seems to be an open
saboteur because he gets down from his trick and violently proclaim he will not
move their truck. The National Guard arrives again and arrests the apátrida truck driver.

The narrator explains that these actions “show
the understanding and cohesion of the trilogy government, the people, and the
Bolivarian Armed Forces.”

The saboteur’s truck is finally moved and a
convoy of tank trucks passes the gate, the drivers waving national and PDVSA
flags. The narrator ends by celebrating the triumph of the “anti-imperialist,
socialist, and profoundly chavista
PDVSA workers.”

Sunday, March 15, 2015

Last year’s
opposition protests have never been considered by the Venezuelan government as what
they really were: opposition protests. Instead the government has consistently
explained them as part of a broad conspiracy. Student protestors have been portrayed
in the official media as mercenaries, paramilitaries, or thugs paid through the
United States embassy.

Violent protests were
never understood by the government as protests that had turned violent because
of frustration or as a response to repressive overreaction by the police and
army. Instead Venezuelans were told through public media that the violence had
been carefully planned from abroad by conspirators based in Bogotá, Miami, and Madrid
who had sent mercenaries to “burn the streets.”

Because protests were
not really protests but part of a conspiracy, conspirators had to be found and
arrested. Those who had leading roles in the guarimbas (barricades), especially coordinating the logistics of
the two months long protests, had to be the links between the student on the
streets and the conspirators abroad.

Rodolfo González was
an active supporter of the guarimbas.
His house was raided on March 26, 2014 by the intelligence police SEBIN and he
was arrested. On March 29 president Maduro on national television identified
him as “El Aviador” and claimed that he was the mastermind of a foreign backed plot
to overthrow his government through violent protests.

On May 2, the then minister
of interior Rodríguez Torres announced that an analysis of the Aviador’s
computer had revealed unspecified links with Caracas mayor Antonio Ledezma
(recently arrested on conspiracy charges.) That supposed evidence never made it
to court. Indeed no evidence of any kind was ever produced during the whole
year González was in custody. It was later revealed, by the president of the
National Assembly Diosdado Cabello, that González had been arrested following a
tip of a patriota cooperante, an anonymous
government informant.

The lack of evidence
did not stop public attorney Katherine Harrington form accusing, in July 2014, González
of “conspiracy, public instigation, and association to commit crime.” Harrington
is the same public attorney that accused mayor Ledezma of conspiracy and is one
of the seven Venezuelan government officials recently sanctioned by the United
State government.

The ordeal the Gonzalez
family was forced to endure during the last year was recounted by Rodolfo’s
daughter, Venezuelan academic Lissette
González in her blog.

Last Friday, March
13, Lissette González herself confirmed the rumors that her father had taken
his own life inside the SEBIN cell during the night. Rodolfo González, and
other students also held since the protests, had been told the day before that they
were to be moved from the SEBIN facilities in El Helicoide, to the notoriously
dangerous Yare prison.

But Rodolfo González
told his family that he had been told he would be moved to Yare prison. The
students in SEBIN told their families that they were told they would be moved
to Yare. Some reports claim that prisons minister Iris Valera herself told the
prisoners they would be moved to Yare. If what the Interior Minister says is
true, then these prisoners were subject to a very serious form of psychological
pressure.

When conspiracy
theories become the official discourse of a government, they have serious
political consequences. They are not just an innocent interpretation of reality
among others: when used by authorities they turn political adversaries into
enemies. Critics and protesters cease to be disgruntled citizens with
legitimate (or not) grievances against the authorities and become part of grand
conspiracies plot. They are no longer part of the national community, but
lackeys of foreign powers and are therefore to be treated as traitors. They are
dehumanized and ridiculed
by public media. They cease to have human rights because they have become
the embodiment of the absolute other and of absolute evil. The can be charged
without any evidence, and worse…

Saturday, March 14, 2015

Venezuela’s human
rights organization PROVEA has expressed its concerns about recent accusations made
by the president of the National Assembly Diosdado against several human right
activists and union leaders.

In his television
show “Con el Mazo Dando”, Cabello accused the activists of being part of “conspiracy
plans” against the government. As evidence Cabello showed pictures of the
activists participating in a public meeting which was also attended by officials
of the embassies of Canada and of the United States in Caracas. He also praised
an anonymous informer or patriota
cooperante for the pictures and the information.

Friday, March 13, 2015

Rodolfo González was
the father of Venezuelan university professor and close friend Lissette
González. He was in jail since April last year, having
been accused by president Maduro, on national television and without any
evidence, of masterminding an attempt to overthrow his government. Rodolfo
González died last night in a SEBIN cell.

The day before the announcement of recent
sanctions and the ensuing anti-imperialist reaction, I made this comment to a
question by the Latin
American Advisor:

Q: The government of Venezuelan President Nicolás
Maduro recently arrested Caracas Mayor Antonio Ledezma over accusations of
involvement in a coup plot and has also sought to remove legislator Julio
Borges from his seat, moves critics have said are the latest in a series of
illegal attempts to silence opposition leaders. What is the state of the
opposition in Venezuela today, and how are the government’s actions affecting
its strategy? Will the opposition be able to capitalize on Maduro’s low
popularity, which currently sits at about 20 percent, in parliamentary
elections that are expected to take place later this year?

A: Hugo Pérez Hernáiz, professor of sociology at the
Universidad Central de Venezuela: “If the opposition wants to capitalize on the
government’s low popularity and win the next legislative elections, it will
have to overcome several hurdles. First, the opposition has to sort out its
internal differences between its radical and ‘electoral’ factions. Recent
announcements from the Mesa de la Unidad Democrática (MUD) of successful
negotiations for the primaries and designated candidates are a good sign, but
not the end of the story, as many opposition supporters could heed
abstentionist calls regularly made through social media. Second, the opposition
will face a government that will use its hold on most of the local media to
frame the elections, not as a struggle between a powerful government and a
battered opposition, but rather as an epic battle of a revolutionary
nationalist movement against an imperial power and its local lackeys.
Anti-imperialism will probably resonate most with the hard-core Chavista base
and not among general voters, but the government could use the anti-imperialist
rhetoric to justify further crackdowns on the opposition. For example, by
politically inhibiting or arresting key opposition leaders, even candidates for
the Assembly, the opposition’s electoral bid could be significantly weakened
and the radical abstentionist faction strengthened. And last, a pre-elections
surprise by the government, such as last year’s dacazo before the regional
elections, cannot be ruled out.”

“We are going to send a message to the Venezuelan
opposition: the fatherland [Patria]
is being threatened. Any Venezuelan unwilling to defend the fatherland is surely
willing to be a traitor, is surely willing to be an enemy, is surely willing to
be an evil doer [malinche], and as
such, he must be treated. The fatherland must be defended.”

President
Maduro declared yesterday that the real objective of the recent sanctions imposed
on Venezuelan officials is to force the government to free Leopoldo López, whom
he called and agent of the Untied States:

“They declare a whole country as a threat in
order to save one of their agents: Leopoldo López. They accuse us because
Venezuelan justice has jailed the main agents they have sent in order to
destabilize Venezuela. It is because of them [the opposition] that this country
has been catalogued by the United States as a threat. (…) If something positive
has come out of this juncture, is that the real enemies of the fatherland have
come out from their hideouts, that [the fact has come out that] they have waged
an economic war against us, a political war, a psychological war, and coup d’état
attempts.”

Chavista political leader Juan Barreto also
questioned the patriotism of the opposition. He
is quoted by AVN:

“The right believes that the fatherland means
only business, they ignore the true meaning of being born in this land, because
to be Venezuelan is to be revolutionary.”

Thursday, March 12, 2015

Here is a small selection
of some of the most poetical expressions of anti-imperialist sentiment made in
the past few days, taken from pro-government web page Aporrea and the opinion
page of the Agencia Venezolana de Noticias
(AVN).

Rafael Guillén Beltre writes
for Aporrea he fears that president Maduro’s courageous discourse asking
congress to grant him especial enabling power to fight imperialism could make
him the target of “new” assassinations attempts by the enemies of the
revolution. He argues that “the satanic elites that dominate the world under a collective
hypnosis of the human race –which for them is but a flock that should always be
docile and subordinate,- could not come to terms with the fact that an
extraordinary leader such as Hugo Chávez awakened the people as he did, with the
infinite force of the greatest love ever poured by a leader on his people.”

Marcos Melendez, in Aporrea,
warns that the imperialist invasion in imminent and will be very swift: “any
Venezuela who does not own an airplane that can take him out of the country
within a period of 25 minutes should be alert and united [cohesionarse] in rejecting this hideous recipe applied by the Obama
administration under the pressure of economic groups, who want to see a return
for the money they have invested in overthrowing the Venezuelan government, and
to put their hands on the biggest oil reserves of the planet.”

Leandro Lev, Aporrea, is
concerned that if the government fights the imperial invasion with the same
tools it has fought the “economic war”, Venezuela is doomed: “In the economic
war we have handed the weapons (dollars) to the enemy. That’s something like,
in the face of a supposed invasion, we hand our rifles to the señores gringos.”

UCV professor Franklin González via
AVN writes that in the face of the imperial threat, the time has come for
the Latin American people to unite in support of the Venezuelan government: “Faced
with this new threat, which is serious and has similar characteristics to aggressions
rehearsed in the past, it is the time for solidarity and support [resteo] of the Bolivarian revolution by the
people and governments of Latin America and the Caribbean, beyond [only] disagreeing
with this cynic and meddling [injerencista]
policy [they should] commit to its rejection. For patriotic Venezuelans the
time has come for convictions, not for hesitation.”

Hernán
Mena Cifuentes, AVN, claims that the “extraordinary” development of the
United States was achieved by using the raw commodities plundered from
Venezuela, “until, through the actions of the Bolivarian Revolution lead by
Chávez, whose example was followed by other progressive and revolutionary leaders,
they were rescued from their claws.”

In the government’s anti-imperialist
rhetoric, Obama’s announcements fit well as “evidence” that the United States
is behind what it claims are an “economic war” and “on-going” coup conspiracies.

Yesterday several government
officials, including president Maduro, declared that Obama’s announcement
is part of a broad
conspiracy to overthrow the government and that it signals an “imminent” intervention
by the US government on Venezuela. Some
officials have been calling for a strengthening of the “civic military
union” in the face of what they believe is a prelude of an invasion by United
States forces.

Maduro announced that
he will be asking the National Assembly a new Anti-imperialist enabling law, granting him unspecified special powers to fight the alleged
imperialist threat. According to the president, the law will be an “instrument to
safeguard the sovereignty and peace of the nation.”

“President Barack
Obama, representing the imperialist elite of the United States, has decided to personally
assume the task of overthrowing my government and to intervene in Venezuela in
order to control it. (…) This is why it has taken this step today,” said
Maduro.

Saturday, March 7, 2015

In the final minutes
of his interview
for Latin Pulse, Professor Dan Hellinger of Webster University made an important
point: he is concerned that the constant talk of coup and conspiracies by the
Venezuelan government could potentially lead to the unintended consequence of actually
triggering a coup. Disaffected officers could end up believing that others are
really plotting a coup and that maybe it’s not such a bad idea to join or even
start their own plot.

In politics conspiracy
theories can become self-fulfilled prophesies. Not only because potential
conspirators can eventually pick up on the idea of the feasibility of a coup d’état,
as Professor Hellinger argues, but also because constant accusation of
conspiracy are polarizing, lead to a mentality in which political adversaries
become enemies, and can be used to justify repression. If you believe that the
whole world is conspiring against you, and you act accordingly, you are likely
to alienate a lot of people that may end up really conspiring against you.

Yesterday, in one of
the many events to commemorate the passing of Chávez two years ago, president
Maduro addressed the armed forces and gave a reassuring discourse emphasizing, according
to the Agencia Venezolana de Noticias, the “compromise [of the armed
forces] to the Bolivarian values, forged during the 15 years of revolution by
the comandante Chávez, and also to
the defense of the military honor in the face of the attacks perpetrated by the
government of the United States and the national right wing, which aim at
corrupting and showing the world a wrong image of one of the pillars [the armed
forces] of the revolution.”

In his discourse Maduro
reviewed the recent history of the Venezuelan armed forces, using the
unconditional loyalty to Chávez as the basic link of his narrative. As it is usual
in the official rhetoric, Maduro explained that the February 4, 2992 coup lead
by Chávez is not to be understood as a coup, but as a “patriotic rebellion, the
voice of dignity raised for all, a rebellion against the elites [cúpulas], the oligarchies, an
anti-imperialist rebellion lead by our comandante Hugo Chávez, with bravery, courage,
responsibility, and love for our people.”

It seems important for
the Venezuelan government not to give bad ideas to army officers.